Common Affairs

Making friends, shopping, checking, seducing, dreaming, lying, concretising ... the fields of agency proposed by the festival’s to-do list are as vast in range as they are specific. They spotlight a scepticism about exhaustive, let alone totalitarian theories and the difficulties of nevertheless somehow putting our incoherent, diffuse knowledge into context. But the host of social territories involved makes it difficult even to draft up, much less to implement suitable possibilities of action, after all the horizon of these possibilities is practically beyond grasp.

Are we then damned to a constant repetition of stereotypes and catastrophies? Is correct action still a trap into which exhaustive theories lure us? Is there any point in being politically active or does this lead straight to being unreasonably appropriated? “Common Affairs” takes a look at the constant change of perspectives and attempts to forge links between what we think we know and what we think we can do. From different vantage points, the participating artists pose questions concerning the possibilities of distinguishing or co-conceiving subjective action and political contexts, thus dealing with common affairs despite contrasting strategies.

Künstlerin / Künstler / Gruppe: Ursula Biemann
Künstlerin / Künstler / Gruppe: Mladen Bizumic
Künstlerin / Künstler / Gruppe: Kristeifur Björnsson
Künstlerin / Künstler / Gruppe: Klaus Föttinger
Künstlerin / Künstler / Gruppe: Mustafa Maluka
Künstlerin / Künstler / Gruppe: Josephine Meckseper
Künstlerin / Künstler / Gruppe: Lily van der Stocker
Kuratorin / Kurator: Reinhard Braun